


Same Procedure

by Himbocracy



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale has a miserable old time shopping for clothes), Bets & Wagers, Bickering, Canon-Atypical Sobriety, Canon-Book, Cello Abuse, Dirty Talk, Domestic Fluff, M/M, New Year's Resolutions, Nicotine Withdrawal, Random German Tourists, Wing Grooming, [Token Gay in 90s film voice] MAKEOVER, jazzercise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21935548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himbocracy/pseuds/Himbocracy
Summary: “Desperate for the easiest possible way, people start buying absolute jackshit because they think it’ll help, and when they inevitably fail they feel even guiltier and they’re doing even worse than before. It’s equally amusing every year.”“Then why are you suggesting we do it?”Crowley looked at him blankly and shrugged. “Because we make Resolutions every year, and we’re always piss drunk. S’a nice tradition, really. I’ve grown quite attached.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	Same Procedure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I’m back on my bullshit guys. Fic time!

They’d seen a number of new years in their time, to be completely fair. The day tended to lose its troubling potential for existential dread at some point, usually around the five thousand year mark. At least they’d accomplished something this year, what with saving the Earth from its brimstoney end and all. Everything was fine, and this was celebrated, inventively, with getting piss drunk in a bookshop.

Crowley let himself slump into the sofa cushion and took a hefty gulp of Champagne. “So— are we doing the...the resolutions thing this year?”

“Surely not, dear,” answered Aziraphale.  
He helped himself to a Quality Street, making sure to avoid the orange ones, which were bad, and the red ones, which were downright nefarious and thus Crowley’s drug of choice. _He_ liked the blue ones best.

“Shouldn’t we be...Y’know, like...striving towards self-improvement every year?” 

“It’s not like we haven’t been doing it since 1753—“  
Aziraphale gingerly freed the chocolate of its wrapper, which he folded neatly and put aside on a growing pile. “And every year we have spectacularly, completely and utterly failed.”  
He popped the chocolate into his mouth. 

“Yes—yes—I know. S’quite embarrassing, actually.” 

“Quite.“

“I think it’s my best work yet.”

“You’re kidding, surely?” Aziraphale refilled his glass, and noticed that he’d lost count. 

“Not to honk my own horn, but it’s really quite brilliant. S’all psychology, you see—“ he bit into a chocolate and kept talking, his mouth full with raspberry cream, “You’re deliberately playing with people’s guilt. Oh— I should really eat healthier, exercise more, yadi yada. Desperate for the easiest possible way, people start buying absolute jackshit because they think it’ll help, and when they inevitably fail they feel even guiltier and they’re doing even worse than before. It’s equally amusing every year.” 

“Then why are you suggesting we do it?” 

Crowley looked at him blankly and shrugged. “Because we make Resolutions every year, and we’re always piss drunk. S’a nice tradition, really. I’ve grown quite attached.” 

“Same procedure?” 

“Why not?” 

Aziraphale stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, and drank his champagne. Then he had an idea.  
“Though—what if we make them for each other?” 

“M’sorry?” 

“What if we make each other’s New Year’s Resolutions?” 

“So you can tell me to be nicer to my plants again?” 

“...We’ll make it a wager then, no— hear me out— we make each other’s resolutions, and whoever can keep his the longest wins.”

“Wins what exactly?”

“...Favours.”

Crowley snorted. “Favours of what sort exactly?”

“Paperwork, for instance.”

After the end of the End times and the eleven-year-old Antichrist telling Heaven and Hell off, their respective head offices had, in place of torturing them both for eternity, chosen to pointedly ignore their shenanigans. The only difference seemed to be that the missives demanding they send their reports in on time had turned more passive-aggressive, the legal jargon more convoluted, and the forms even lengthier than ever before. Modern solutions to modern problems, they supposed.

Aziraphale smiled smugly. “You’ll file my reports for the rest of the year.”

“ _If_ you win.”

“—‘f course. If I win, when I win— no point in arguing about the semantics.” He lifted his glass. “Very well. To bureaucracy.”

When Crowley had drained the glass, he asked, “10 each? Seems only biblical.”

Aziraphale thought. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe five each, ten total. Do your worst.”

—

“Well, let’s see what the New Year holds for me,” said Aziraphale, unfolding the piece of paper handed to him. He read: 

“‘1. Thou shalt be nicer to customers.’  
You know what? Fair enough. I’m going to be _aggressively_ polite this year.” 

He read on.

“‘2. Thou shalt get thee a new hobby. No miracles.

3\. Thou shalt acquire garments fitting to the times.’  
Really, I thought we’d gone over this already. My clothes look perfectly fine!”

“Pff, yeah. Scattered on the bedroom floor, maybe—“ 

“Charming, dear. But I can and will not wear skinny jeans, just so you’re warned.”

“Leggings, then? S’not so different from the fifteenth century anyways, and you have the arse for it—“

Aziraphale rolled his eyes audibly.  
What would come next? Slacks and tank tops? Running shorts? Athleisure? Come on now.

He wiped the images from his brain. In fact, he banished them and guarded the gates with a flaming sword so that they may never return.

“‘4. Thou shalt refrain from quoting great poets during sexual intercourse.’”

He started giggling, not quite unlike a twelve-year-old in sex ed class. “—I’m sorry, what? When have I been _doing_ that?”

“Yesterday, for instance. I said I was about to finish and you started speaking french with that terrible accent of yours.”

“I did not—“ 

“You do it almost every single time!” 

“You certainly don’t seem to be turned off by it, if your— your language is to be trusted.” 

“No, no— don‘t get me wrong, I enjoy sleeping with you, but I just think it’s, er...“ he stared over the top of his glass. “S’a bit weird thinking about Shakespeare’s sonnets while I ride you. An actual person we knew? You see how that’s weird, don’t you?” 

“I’m just trying to make it romantic.” 

“No poets in the bedroom. No Shakespeare, no Dickinson or Shelley or Keats or Wordsworth or Baudelaire or Schiller, and certainly not that _weird_ Milton quote about spirits embracing. No Song of Songs either, for that matter. Please just talk about normal stuff like...nipples and bodily fluids.”

“...Very well then.”  
Aziraphale cleared his throat and set his eyes on the last resolution, which didn’t seem to please him too much.

“‘5. Thou shalt break thy tobacco habit.’”

He gave Crowley a look that spoke a thousand words, all of them more or less boiling down to ‘No fair, you absolute bastard.’ Crowley smiled with such perfect mock-innocence that he briefly considered a good smiting. Finally he drew himself up to his full height— a head shorter than the demon, but it was the gesture that mattered— and said in the most resolute tone he could master,  
“Fine. This year, I will stop smoking for good.”

Oh, and the game was absolutely on now. He’d do anything to avoid giving Crowley the satisfaction of an easy victory when he, and it had happened every January without fail, found him having a fag outside the bookshop to calm his poor nerves. How else was he going to react to customers touching his first editions!?

Then Crowley would light himself one with his bare fingertip in such an incredibly douchey way and tease Aziraphale about it, often by just slyly pointing out the date on the calendar. It was rapidly becoming one of Crowley’s favourite things to tease Aziraphale about [1], and though it wasn’t like the angel ran any serious health risks from his nicotine habit by nature of being, well, immortal, it was beginning to become personal. 

“Well, then. Read yours, dear.” 

Crowley cleared his throat, and read: 

“‘1. This year, I will stop reading those dreadful tabloids and consume literature instead.’  
Really, it’s not as if I’ve never read a book before, angel—“

“Then I expect we’ll have a great deal of cozy nights in.” 

“Great.”

“‘2. I will stop purposely infuriating people on social media.’  
” He looked unimpressed. “The cruelty—! Though I guess I simply won’t have time since I’ll be busy getting my grubby hands all over your books...

‘3. I will serve as a magical assistant for Aziraphale should he be hired at a special event...’” 

There Crowley looked up. “What the fuck, angel?” 

Aziraphale smiled.

“You know what? Fine. I wouldn’t mind if you made me vanish from another mortifying birthday party.”  
He sighed. 

“‘4. I will drink less alcohol—‘ wait, no, come the fuck on— You can’t expect me to sit through your magic act completely sober!”

Aziraphale kept smiling, and had a deep drink of champagne.

Crowley looked at the last resolution on his scrap. He was even more irritated, if it was humanly or demonically possible.  
Slowly, through clenched teeth, he read: 

“‘The fifth and last: This year, I will exercise more.’” 

Aziraphale smiled so hard his cheeks hurt. 

“Are you trying to kill me, angel?” 

“You have dreadful condition. _I_ could outrun you.”

“—that— that doesn’t change the fact that we’re not on the same level here! Yours are mild at best but sobriety? Exercise? _Magic!?_ I would have bought you leather gear a while ago if I’d known how much of a fucking sadist you were—“ 

“Surely not, my dear.”[2] 

“—You’d be an amazing demon. Gleefully torturing sinners for all eternity with— mnh—with fucking card tricks!”

“You did consent though, didn’t you? You brought it all up, if I recall correctly.”

Crowley buried his face in his palm and breathed out heavily. He poured himself another glass. “Fine. Fine. We’re doing this.” He held out his hand. Aziraphale took it, resolutely staring at him. They shook.

“You are on, foul fiend!” 

“Likewise— _angel!_ ”  
He tried to say it with a tone of contempt, he really tried. It wasn’t his fault that it made such a perfect pet name...

“...though. It does only start tomorrow, does it? Until then we can do what we want?”

“Absolutely,” said Crowley, stretching himself out luxuriously and looking at his watch, “By the way, five minutes to Midnight.” He skipped the glass and went for the bottle. 

“Good.” Aziraphale put up his feet. “Fire?”

Crowley lighted the angel’s cigarette with actual hellfire before shaking his fingertip to extinguish himself. “And I hope you know that I‘m expecting a kiss for New Year’s.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Of course along with his comparatively loose morals, lack of orderliness, and truly frightening taste in jumpers. If we want to accord credit where credit is due though, he mocked neither his music taste nor (rather comforting) sogginess around the middle. The former would earn him a two-hour lecture on the intricate beauty of Palestrina’s counterpoint and the latter just made him upset.
> 
> [2] That image, he believed, was also sent where the leggings had gone.


End file.
